Making 1080p/60FPS Games Is All Up To Developers, Says Microsoft

Microsoft and its Xbox One have been under fire lately after almost every third-party title was unable to push a resolution of 1080p while running the game at 60FPS. Worse is the fact that the PS4 is usually able to perform this feat, but now Microsoft is saying it’s not up to the Xbox One’s hardware alone.

Xbox UK marketing director Harvey Eagle spoke to The Guardian yesterday, saying that it was up to developers to utilise not only the power of the Xbox One console itself, but also the server features that help increase graphical output.

“Let’s be clear about this: Xbox One fully supports 1080p at 60 frames-per-second. Forza Motosport 5 is an example of a game that delivers on that. It’s up to individual developers to determine what is the best balance in order to deliver the best experience to gamers.”

“No longer can you measure or talk about power in terms of pixels and polygon counts. Performance in this era comes from three areas: hardware, software and the cloud.”

Eagle went on to cite the Titnfall Beta as a showcase for what the power of the cloud can do, with the week long event hosting over two million players with no major issues.

“That makes the game run smoothly without interruptions. You need to think about what power really means in the next generation.”

When asked whether Microsoft will make these server capabilities open to all developers, including third-party ones, Eagle said that it would be foolish to invest in such a massive server farm and then not share.

“We said at launch that we’d built a server farm of 300,000 dedicated servers to support multiplayer games–it would be foolish of us not to work with developers to ensure they get the maximum from that power.”

This isn’t the first time Microsoft has touted the power as the cloud as a major selling point for the Xbox One, but developers have yet to utilise in the way Microsoft is hoping. Until then, this is basically all talk and no substance, and just another avenue for everyone to discredit the power of the cloud.

Although, I wouldn’t be so quick to make the judgement anymore, especially after seeing the impact it made with Titanfall. There’s something here.